I know they will die,
the dahlias, the zinnias,
the petunias, the geraniums,
will die come autumn,
and still I buy them, still
plant them and sing to them
as I do. Looking up
from the garden beds, trowel
in hand, I see it in everything—
the spruce, the ants, the swallows,
this hand—all that lives will die.
And staring at the basil, pungent
and green and ephemeral, I feel
so darn lucky to unfold
for whatever time I am given.
To bloom while I can. To be marigold.
Calendula. Mother. Begonia. Gratefulness
floods me like low summer sun.
I turn my face toward that light.
Posts Tagged ‘mortality’
Annual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged annual, flower, garden, gratefulness, mortality on May 31, 2025| 8 Comments »
Tale of Two Moments
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, love, memory, mortality, mother, parenting on January 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
Holding my girl
on the couch,
came a moment
so tender because
I remembered
I will die—
what grace when,
minutes later,
lost in the bliss
of her warmth,
came a moment
so tender because
I forgot.
When It Looks Like the End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cherry tree, growth, inspiration, mortality, stumpy, tree on April 1, 2024| 11 Comments »
for Stumpy, and maybe for you
To survive. To not only survive,
but to bring joy. To bloom despite
our own hollowing.
To bloom despite the erosion
of the world in which we grew.
I speak of a cherry tree, but
I also, perhaps, speak of you—
how you have made of your life
not just a stump, but a story.
How in hostile conditions,
despite brackish odds,
you’ve found the drive to grow.
How your words and your actions,
like cuttings, might take on a life
of their own—a legacy
of resilience that finds a home
in the soil of the lives still here.
In this way, you continue
to flourish and be known.
In this way you are not here
and ever here. Gone
and never gone. In this way
one life is a blossom that disappears
and returns on a branch not its own.
None of us live forever.
Still the chance to give the best of ourselves
away. This is how we go on.
for more information about Stumpy, the beloved cherry tree, visit here
One While Flying Away from My Mom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mom, mortality, sunset on March 26, 2024| 4 Comments »
longing to love you forever
I watch the sun go down
desperately red
Some Days It’s Like This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, meeting death, mortality, tea on June 25, 2023| 4 Comments »
Today it is somehow easy to know I will die.
Meeting mortality feels as possible, as natural
as inviting someone over for tea.
Caffeine or no caffeine, I ask.
Mortality shrugs as if it’s all the same.
I settle on the new tea I bought yesterday,
assam with rose petals. It’s dark and floral
and makes the mouth come alive.
You’re really not afraid of me today?
mortality asks. I shrug and say, Not right now.
We sip from our cups and stare out at the field
where the wind is whipping the tall grasses
in rhythmic pulses. “It’s good,” says mortality.
I nod. And we sit in content silence.
There just isn’t much to say.
When our cups are empty, mortality
doesn’t leave. It occurs to me then
my invitation to tea wasn’t necessary.
Mortality was already here.
It moves with me as I rise to clear the dishes,
as I wash the cups, as I walk out
into the wind, into the field.
The Bidding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged humanness, mortality, opening, time on August 13, 2022| 3 Comments »
Again, I am ruled by it, this invitation to be wildly open the way a day is open, this invitation to be porous the way birdsong is porous, this invitation to feel it all the way skin feels it all when I slip into a blue alpine lake. Again this urge to fall all the way into the mystery and refuse any rope thrown in an attempt to rescue me. Morning comes with the scent of autumn, charged with ripeness and rot and the kinship of everything. What an honor to be mortal, to know the value of a day, to know how vulnerable we are and then give ourselves away. |
Practical Application
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged moment, mortality on January 16, 2022| 8 Comments »
Knowing now how one moment
rewrites every moment after it;
how in an instant, the heart can trip
over its own beat and need to be retaught
how to love; how irreversible takes
only a second to say and yet
contains all eternity; how quickly our breath
can be claimed by the tides of forever,
for this I buy deep pink tulips for the table.
For this I make Dutch apple pie.
For this I walk through the canyon
in moonlight. I remind myself no guarantees.
For this, I pull you in and hold you. For this,
I stand still in the spruce trees and breathe.
We Want to Believe We Can Live Forever
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forever, imperfection, impermanence, mortality on November 5, 2020| 6 Comments »
And if I can’t live forever,
then let me make the most
of this sliver of eternity,
these slender days I’ve been given
in the ongoing story.
Let me be recklessly curious
about what I will never know—
driven to dance with the secrets
of galaxy and spruce cone.
Just this morning, I wondered
what wake will I leave behind?
Let me be relentlessly kind.
Let me find peace
with the imperfect self.
Let me find love
for the imperfect world.
In my smallest moment,
let me lean into enormity.
If I can’t live forever,
let me at least believe in forever
and love the world
accordingly.
Still Life with Skull
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mortality, poem, poetry, skull on November 13, 2016| 6 Comments »
they look hollow,
the sockets where the eyes
once were,
or is it the looker
who is hollow?
*
map of the skull—
all the places her dust has been,
all the places it will go
*
it is months
before he can tell her
that her skull is creepy,
that it scares him—
he hides it behind the books
*
across the brow,
a forever stamp,
a lotus, full bloom—
shhhh, don’t tell her
it’s already been canceled
*
golden wings in the back
of her skull,
is it any wonder
every morning
her thoughts fly east?
*
there are monks
who use skulls as a centerpiece—
perhaps as a symbol
of mortality, perhaps
because it’s lovely
*
there’s a red leaf
where her mouth would be—
here hung those lips
that loved
to kiss*
*
all around the skull on the table
are the skulls of the living,
so much shedding left to be done
*
behind the birding book
she finds the skull,
puts it on the table again
*”Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” in Hamlet, William Shakespeare
In a Kitchen Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mortality, peaches, poem, poetry on September 3, 2016| 1 Comment »
for R
She skins the peaches
to freeze them
before they rot,
her hands moving over
the fruits that have already
sunk into themselves
and bloomed black.
There is such a thing
as too late.
Her own ending
implied by the blood test,
a dark bloom inside her.
Still, there is so much
sweetness to save.
Her hands glisten with it.